Surrogacy: Temporary Familial Bonds and the Bondage of Origins in Fouad Laroui's Une année chez les Français

This article examines Fouad Laroui's novel (Laroui, Fouad. 2010. Une année chez les Français. Paris: Julliard), Une année chez les Français, and charts the protagonist's development to argue that it offers a new model for Moroccan coming-of-age in a postcolonial context. While Une année is a Bildungsroman, it breaks away from patterns seen in the genre before it to illustrate the possibilities of creating 'Third Spaces' (Bhabha, Homi K. 1990. "The Third Space." In Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, edited by Jonathan Rutherford, 207-221. London: Lawrence & Wishart). The protagonist, Mehdi, arrives at his moment of 'apprentissage' thanks to his pseudo-adoption by a French family and French boarding school, where he experiences what I have termed a pull-push sensation. I outline the sources and effects of the pull-push Mehdi perceives and then turn to argue that these experiences allow him to destabilise the relationship between the concepts of family and familiarity. It is through his newly found understanding that what is familiar is not always family and what is family does not always feel familiar that Mehdi is able to articulate the third space he desires for himself and come of age. While this article focuses on the experiences of a single, fictional character, Une année chez les Francais introduces readers with a framework for imagining the identity-formation of a multiplicity of individuals who have grown up at the intersection of postcolonial North Africa and continental France.